Member Story

“It’s Given Us Energy to Go Forward”: Sherry’s Story

When Sherry walked into the Ignite My Retirement seminar at Legacy Church in Atascadero, California, she carried the same question so many carry into this season: what now?

She walked out with an answer — and with something she didn’t expect.

“It’s been a wonderful seminar for all of us,” she said afterward, standing in the church courtyard. “It’s touched our hearts. It’s given us peace. It’s given us energy to go forward and know where God wants us to be.”

That word — energy — comes up a lot when people finish the seminar. Retirement is so often framed as slowing down, stepping aside, winding things up. But Sherry described something closer to a beginning: taking everything she has been and pointing it somewhere new.

“How to take who we have been in the past, and ignite our path ahead of us — so that we know where we want to go, and how the Holy Spirit’s going to lead us.”

That’s the heart of what Ignite Retirement teaches. The decades you spent working, leading, and raising a family weren’t the spark — they were the fuel line. The spark, the gifts, the calling God placed in you — those don’t expire with a paycheck. They’re still there, waiting to be fanned into flame.

For Sherry and the group at Legacy Church, the seminar did exactly that. “We thank Mr. Hennessy for his time. We thank our minister, Garrett, for bringing him here. And we have all been blessed.”

Her advice for anyone standing at the edge of this next chapter, wondering whether their best days are behind them?

“I hope you take the time to try it too.”